eap of ashes, at
the mouth of one of your pits.

54. You have thus two limiting examples, of the Pure Passion, and of
its corruption. Now, whatever influence it is, without or within us,
which has a tendency to degrade the one towards the other, is
literally and accurately "Satanic." And this treacherous or deceiving
spirit is perpetually at work, so that all the worst evil among us is
a betrayed or corrupted good. Take religion itself: the desire of
finding out God, and placing one's self in some true son's or
servant's relation to Him. The Devil, that is to say, the deceiving
spirit within us, or outside of us, mixes up our own vanity with this
desire; makes us think that in our love to God we have established
some connection with Him which separates us from our fellow-men, and
renders us superior to them. Then it takes but one wave of the Devil's
hand; and we are burning them alive for taking the liberty of
contradicting us.

55. Take the desire of teaching--the entirely unselfish and noble
instinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the truth we know, and
guarding them from the errors we see them in danger of;--there is no
nobler, no more constant instinct in honorable breasts; but let the
Devil formalize it, and mix the pride of a profession with it--get
foolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, and make
their giddy heads giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a
submissive crowd--and you have it instantly corrupted into its own
reverse; you have an alliance _against_ the light, shrieking at the
sun, and the moon, and stars, as profane spectra:--a company of the
blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens
and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are
treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But _we_ are
true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will
lead you."

56. Take the desire and faith of mutual help; the virtue of vowed
brotherhood for the accomplishment of common purpose, (without which
nothing great can be wrought by multitudinous bands of men); let the
Devil put pride of caste into it, and you have a military organization
applied for a thousand years to maintain that higher caste in idleness
by robbing the laboring poor; let the Devil put a few small personal
interests into it, and you have all faithful deliberation on national
law rendered impossible in the parliaments of Europe, by the
antagoni